Although Virgin Galactic is generally known as a space tourism company, it sees research experiments as a future mission segment and significant business opportunity. To this end, the company has signed a contract with NASA to provide up to three charter flights on its SpaceShipTwo suborbital spaceplane. The deal follows the curtain closing on the Space Shuttle program earlier this year and is part of NASA's Flight Opportunities Program, which is charged with providing reduced-gravity environments for research experiments while encouraging the emerging commercial space industry.
The agreement requires NASA to charter a full suborbital flight from Virgin Galactic, with the option for two additional flights. If all options are exercised, the contract value is US$4.5 million. Each mission allows for up to 1,300 lbs (590 kg) of scientific experiments, which Virgin says could enable up to 600 experimental payloads per flight. The Flight Opportunities Program will select the payloads to be flown from a variety of proposals currently being solicited from the research community.
The Flight Opportunities Program has already arranged for the flight of a broad range of scientific payloads designed by NASA labs, universities, and private companies across the United States, but to date, none have yet made it into space. Virgin Galactic says it's SpaceShipTwo offers a significantly larger cabin than any other commercial company taking deposits for space flights today, allowing for a wider range of experiments to be carried out.
"We are excited to be working with NASA to provide the research community with this opportunity to carry out experiments in space," said George Whitesides, President and CEO of Virgin Galactic. "An enormous range of disciplines can benefit from access to space, but historically, such research opportunities have been rare and expensive. At Virgin Galactic, we are fully dedicated to revolutionizing access to space, both for tourist astronauts and, through programs like this, for researchers."
Virgin Galactic says it will provide a Flight Test Engineer on every flight to monitor and interact with the experiments as necessary and, if requested, the experiments can be quickly accessed after landing, which can be critical for many types of experiments.
Although Virgin Galactic didn't say when the NASA-chartered flight/s were due to launch, they are set to be the first experiments flown via the Flight Opportunities Program to cross the boundary into space.
Comparing the safety of a fifty year old research aerospace craft designed to explore the characteristics of high speed near space flight, with a aerospace liner is ludicrous.
Please define what you mean \"TOO DANGEROUS\" and why you get to make the decision for others. The X-15 program did not end because of the danger.
The SS2 engine is a masterpiece of simplicity and is thus very reliable. The feathering system does not look to be any more complicated than ailerons. The use of passive stabilization on reentry eliminates dozens of failure points inherent in an active stabilization system.
All your \"safety systems\" would increase vehicle weight increasing by an order of magnitude the likelihood of of an accident during reentry when an accident is most likely.
The Space Shuttle is the most complicated machine ever built, and of its two catastrophic failures one was because it was launched in weather outside its flight envelope, and the other was because of bad design.
Why do your arguments make me think you work for a different and larger aerospace firm, that has not been able to get its suborbital vehicle to fly?
Dude, the Space Shuttle didn\'t have any of those \"safety features\" either. If a single thing failed on takeoff or landing, there was pretty much nothing that could be done. Same with pretty much any spacecraft out there.